Over the past few weeks, we've read numerous articles that indicate CLEAR seems to be throttling certain customers despite the fact that the service is "unlimited". Some users are claiming that after using 7-10GB per day, their speeds are being throttled to around .25Mbps per second (and then back to normal the next day). Others have stated that their speeds are being throttled after using a large amount of data over the course of a month, and don't go back to normal until the next billing cycle. Frustratingly, there doesn't seem to be any official policy on usage and throttling. According to one representative we spoke with at CLEAR, CLEAR will throttle you if you use more than 7GB in one day, while another representative we spoke with stated there was no type of usage cap in place and that CLEAR does not ever throttle speeds.

According to CLEAR's official Acceptable Use Policy, CLEAR "will not place a limit on how much data you upload or download during a month or other particular period, however, it does not mean that we will not take steps to reduce your data rate during periods of congestion or take other actions described in this AUP when your usage is negatively impacting other subscribers to our Service." That wording certainly seems to indicate that CLEAR reserves the right to throttle heavy users - but doesn't tell us anything about how much you'd have to use to get throttled.

As a quick test, we used our CLEAR devices to download several GB's worth of data over a course of a days time to see if we could induce any type of throttling. Despite using well over 7GB in under 24 hours - more data than 3G providers like Verizon and Sprint allow in an entire month - our speeds still measured the same as they did when we started the test. Of course, this doesn't mean CLEAR doesn't throttle - just that they didn't throttle us for excessive usage on this day.

Throttling the speeds of excessive users isn't necessarily a horrible policy - using several gigabytes (or even one gigabyte!) in just one day is NOT common for most users - and excessive use can bog down the network, causing slower performance for all users (which doesn't seem fair to the folks using very little data). However, we understand that users would like to know for certain if there was a certain threshold of usage after which their speeds were going to be throttled, at least so they could plan ahead.